Loose Lips
by Regency
Summary: Canon-divergent AU. After confessing to kissing someone else, Serena knows something has to change in her relationship with Bernie. She and Bernie simply disagree on what needs changing and how their relationship can be saved-if it can. Fix-It fic.


Author: Regency

Title: Loose Lips

Pairing: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe

Summary: Canon-divergent AU. After confessing to kissing Leah, Serena knows something has to change in her relationship with Bernie. She and Bernie simply disagree on what needs changing.

Author's Notes: Come talk Berena to me on Tumblr at sententiousandbellicose! Yes, I'm still Berena trash. At least until Serena leaves in January. Let's make it a hell of a leaving 'do!

* * *

Time was creeping past and Serena had never felt so guilty. Bernie wouldn't write back. They hadn't had more than a few minutes to touch base by phone in weeks and now it had been days without word. She missed her partner, she missed her voice, her touch. She missed being in a relationship. After years of doing it alone, Serena had found the companion she didn't want to be without, yet she could feel that relationship slipping away. Given what she'd just done, perhaps she deserved nothing less.

_Tell her, she deserves to know. _

_But not like this. Not in such an impersonal way. If I could just explain._ Though how could she? Her every attempt to justify her actions to herself smacked of rationalization. There was no excuse. Not flattery, not loneliness, not menopause. She was wrong and she was sorry; she hoped Bernie would forgive her folly.

Serena made the decision to come clean in the small hours of the night shift. For want of another way to reach her perpetually absentee partner, she wrote an email to tell all. Because she couldn't live with the knowledge alone, because she was tired of shouting nonsense into the ether. Because love was what she wanted and guilt was what she had, and that was no way to live.

"I've tried to speak with you but you're too busy to talk. I wish I could have told you this some other way. There's a woman from work who's been pursuing me for months. I've held off because I'm with you and I only want you, but I must admit I've been flattered by the attention."

Serena's fingers rebelled against typing these next words. She forced herself onward.

"Yesterday, something happened. It was a hard day, very hard, and she was there for me. We kissed. I kissed her. I'm sorry. I wished it was you."

Serena covered her face, hating herself and that she needed to say this.

"That's no excuse. She was kind and beautiful and relentless in paying me attention. I was lonely. I'm still lonely." Her fingers froze a moment. She shook out the pins and needles, breathed deep and pushed on. "I understand if this is the end of us, but I hope you'll still come back to see Jason married. He's excited to see you again."

"I love you, still. Yours, Serena." 

* * *

Two hours later, Serena received this terse reply: _Coming home. Talk soon. -B_

Attention from another woman was evidently all it took to grab Bernie's. Serena couldn't find it in her laugh at the irony.

* * *

Bernie's return to Holby City wasn't the joyous reunion Serena would have liked for it to be. She was waiting on Serena's couch at the end of her shift two days later with a drink in her hand and her luggage propped in the entryway. It seemed she hadn't got farther than the liquor cabinet and had been working her way steadily through the whiskey Serena kept on hand just for her. But she wasn't drunk, not quite yet. Like her silence, Bernie could hold her drink.

"Was it only a kiss?" No greeting, no 'welcome home.' This was the confrontation they were having. Serena hung her coat and keys, kept on her shoes, needing the stability, the potential for escape they offered.

"Yes."

"One?"

"Yes."

"Are you in love with her?"

"No."

"Do you think this will escalate?" Bernie pursed her lips. "If I leave right now, will this turn into an affair?"

"If we continue like we are, I don't know. I do know, Bernie, that we cannot continue as we are."

Bernie avoided her eyes to gaze into her glass. "You said she's been after you for months?"

"Since she started at Holby on my birthday."

"What did she do?"

"Bought me a cupcake and invited me back to hers for a one-nighter." Serena had been shaken by the offer. She couldn't remember the last time someone had been so brazen in making their interest known and so willing to pursue her damned be the consequences. She wouldn't have gone through with it under any circumstances, not really. She wanted a blonde with her that night, a particular one. Not just any would have done the trick. That remained the case.

"You should have said something."

"Why? It wasn't going anywhere at that point." Serena retrieved Bernie's undrunk whiskey for something to do but stand in her own defense. Bernie let it go, watching her fidget with it knowing it wasn't her drink of choice.

"You should have told me because we should be able to tell each other those things. If I had known you were feeling neglected I would have, I don't know, tried harder."

"I didn't want you to try _harder_, Bernie. I wanted you to try at all." She huffed and took a fast gulp. It was warm and fortifying going down and would give her a pounding headache come morning. She'd never been any good with brown goods. "I don't want to twist your arm to get you to show me affection. It isn't worth anything if I need to coerce you."

"I didn't know you felt that way." Serena held her tongue seeing Bernie's shoulders rising around her ears defensively. She wished she'd held her tongue sooner. "It isn't coercion, Serena, asking for what you need, it's communication." She wedged her hands between her knees. "You're not the only one who gets lonely or who's pursued by interested parties."

"I didn't think I was." Serena had seen the roving eyes in Holby and France. Nairobi was sure to be as rife in potential suitors. Thinking as much had kept her up on nights when she couldn't reach Bernie. They were ships passing in the night, dropping anchor on opposite shores. Somebody must have been keeping Bernie warm without Serena to do so, or so the nagging voice of Serena's subconscious had said.

"So you kissed her because you thought there was someone else?"

"I kissed her because…she was there and no one else was."

Bernie closed herself off, arms crossed, leaning back. This was the worst possible conversation taking the most painful turn to hurt the one person Serena would rather die than hurt.

"I kissed her and I regretted it immediately, but...doing it made me realize a few things." How very much she preferred Bernie's thin lips and Bernie's dark eyes peering into hers.

Bernie finished the thought for her: "Something has to change."

"Yes, and I think it might be us. Whatever there is of us after this." She didn't permit herself to believe there'd be much. Serena's mistakes when she made them were almost without exceptional catastrophic. Love was no exception.

Bernie sat forward on the couch. She couldn't quite make eye contact with Serena, didn't look directly at her. Somehow she hadn't upped and gone, which Serena supposed was a point in her favor. "What does that mean, we need to change? Are you breaking up with me?"

Serena raked her fingers through the short hairs at her nape. "I don't know, Bernie. I think—I don't think I'm what you want anymore, and if that's the case—"

"Serena, I'm not the one out kissing other women. Am I what _you_ want? That's the question you need to consider. Do you still love me, or—or want me?"

"Both, with all my heart. I never stopped."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me how to fix this." Her breath caught and she finally crept closer to Serena on the couch, scooting nearer to her side. Not close enough for them to touch, but closer, nonetheless. "How do we fix us?"

Serena tucked her hands under her thighs. Months since she'd been close to Bernie and she didn't have the right to touch her, did she? She had been in the wrong and she would live with the consequence. "I can't make that decision."

"You made this one, what's another on?"

Serena grimaced. She'd earned that.

Bernie hooked her pinkie through Serena's, her expression contrite. "You said you were lonely."

Serena settled into the contact. "I _am_ lonely. You're my best friend but you're so far away all the time. You, you get jealous when I spend time with Fleur and that doesn't leave me many options for companionship. I adore Ric but he's got an active social life of his own to cater to. Sian is always entertaining, and I'm lucky if I ever catch her out of chambers or off holiday. I just don't have anybody, Bernie. You have…I don't know who you have. I know nothing about your life in Nairobi, or who you know or who you spend time with." She frequently felt like an extended relation being fobbed off when she asked Bernie what she did outside of work and got vague non-answers instead of diverting stories she could hold to her chest when alone.

"That's just it, I don't spend time with anybody."

"I find that hard to believe. Nobody could keep away from you. I bet they drag you out to drinks all the time. To dinner, outings, nights on the town. I envy them." She hated that she was someone who begrudged her partner happiness when she couldn't be part of it. That wasn't the sort of person she wanted to be, certainly not how she wanted to be in love.

"I don't want them."

"Maybe not now you don't but not even you can ignore your body forever. Flying home every time you've an itch to scratch is anything but sustainable. I'm not a stopover."

"Hang on-"

"That's how I feel. You squeeze me in between all the much more important business of the NTC. I respect that intellectually, but when I'm lonely in bed in the middle of the night, none of those justifications do anything to keep me warm."

"And this other woman does. Was it just a kiss or should I be worried?"

"You already asked me that."

"I didn't ask if you were measuring for drapes. Is it only a kiss or maybe your heart she's got too?"

"I told you I'm not in love with her."

"Not yet, but I find it convenient she's the straw that broke the camel's back, and I don't doubt she'd be the first in line the instant you're free, with Fleur as a close second."

Serena separated their hands. She needed wine and whiskey wasn't a hair on it. "Still on about Fleur. It's like I haven't said anything."

Bernie tailed her to the kitchen, her legs eating up the distance faster than Serena could flee. "How am I in trouble here?" Serena whirled on her, a spotty wineglass in hand.

"You're not a child, Bernie. There isn't a naughty step for neglectful girlfriends. I'm saying I'm lonely and it's hard not to have my head turned by any woman who gives me the time of day."

"Is she that irresistible?"

"Anything but, but she's here and she makes time for me. I don't have to send out a search party to get her to respond to my emails. That goes a long way." Bernie flinched as Serena's words struck home. Serena scowled at her own capacity for cruelty. This was what she had wanted to avoid. "Look, just…I'm sorry for how this has gone down, but maybe it had to happen so that we could see where we stood."

"And where is that?"

"On opposite sides of the world."

"Is that it? Did I fly home to get tossed out on my ear?

"I could never toss you out. You're my best friend, you always have a place with me. But maybe as friends is where we function best." Serena braced herself against the counter. She was doing this. She was pulling the cord and leaving before Bernie could, since of course Bernie would.

"I don't want to be just your friend, Serena."

"Nor I yours."

"I'm in love with you."

Serena contemplated her glass. There weren't enough bottles in the wine fridge to ease the ache to come. "I've been in love with you for years. I just wonder if it would be easier if I didn't miss you as my friend and my partner at the same time."

"If there was someone else keeping you warm instead of me, you mean."

"If my demons weren't shouting you've forgotten all about me and haven't bothered to say anything. I've been there. I can't go there again. If this is all we can have, I'd rather have you as my long-distance friend than as the lover who couldn't be bothered to try. The alternative hurts too much."

"I'll come home, then."

"So you can learn to hate me for forcing you to give up your dreams? I've played this game once before, I don't think so, darling."

Bernie threw up her hands. "Then what? How do we fix this?"

"I don't know we can."

"You're giving up."

"I prefer to think of it as facing facts. We just don't fit."

"That's crap, Campbell, and you know it."

"What I'm doing is giving you an out. I suggest you take it. Concentrate on the NTC and if you find you miss me someday, give me a ring." Serena swallowed back bitter bile at the words.

"No, I refuse. I refuse to give you up so someone else can have you because they're more convenient."

"You think that's your choice, do you?"

"You still love me and I love you. I won't let you go without a fight. Not ever. You can tell your girlfriend I said so."

"I already said it isn't like that. I just want someone who wants me even when they aren't here." Serena rubbed futilely at her head. "I know you must think me high maintenance or needy. Maybe I am. But I need more and it isn't fair for me to go on wanting it in the vain hope that in a few years you'll still care enough to give it to me."

"It wouldn't be long. Nairobi, it isn't forever."

"How long, Bernie? Tell me how much longer you think you'll be in Nairobi."

Bernie shifted, her throat worked. Serena didn't know the answer and still Bernie's body language was explanation enough. "Another year," she said at last, "maybe two."

"This is what I'm talking about. We can't even be out there. I couldn't marry you. We'd be Boston married, right, all but out. And you know, I would take all that if I could be with you."

"You could have been, that was your decision," Bernie rebutted.

"It was, and I convinced myself that love was enough to overcome the distance. But it isn't, is it? Work is first in your world. Work is everything. That would be fine if we worked together, but distance has placed me in the Other category and everything that includes is much farther down the list to you."

Bernie's expression shuttered. "Just like people who aren't family scarcely matter to you."

"Don't. Bernie, you matter, you know you matter to me. You're my partner, the woman I love, the person I don't want to be without."

"But you're choosing someone other than me now."

"I'm choosing me." Serena grabbed her hand and was relieved not to need to fight Bernie for it. "I want you but I choose me. You deserved to hear that from me, not from the rumor mill, not from Ric or Dom. Leah is a symptom, not a cause."

"Leah, is it? Is she pretty?"

"I'm not getting into this." She held on lest Bernie shake her off.

"Is she young?"

"Does it matter? Will you feel better if it's a Botox'd pensioner versus a junior doctor?"

"I don't need to tell you how unprofessional it would be if it was a junior."

"Interesting of you to say so, all things considered. I was unprofessional, sue me. It's not going to happen again, we've agreed." Leah more grudgingly than willingly but Serena had been firm in erecting the boundaries she should never have flouted to begin with. Serena only rarely made the same mistakes twice.

"Glad you talked it out with her. It's good to know where your priorities lie."

Serena dropped her hand like it burned. Bernie knew precisely where to strike to wound. What made the ordeal of being known so terrifying was the power it gave others to hurt you.

"I wouldn't talk from where you're standing, Major. Getting you to answer a voice message is a three-day process. I got tired of waiting." She cocked her brows. "Is that what you wanted to hear? It's true. I'm sick of having a relationship with your voicemail inbox. Have you any idea how many nights I've spent listening to the recording just to feel close to you? I don't feel close to you anymore. I miss feeling close to you. So, yes, I'm lonely. That isn't new."

Bernie stared at the ceiling, visibly bracing herself. "I didn't want things to end up like this."

"Makes two of us. Wine?" Serena was going to need at least a glass to get to the other side of whatever this conversation turned into. Heaven knew it didn't seem she'd have Bernie anymore at the end of it. Bernie assented. Mixing alcohol. It really was as bad as it seemed.

Bernie sat at Serena's breakfast bar while she poured. Serena was drinking by the time she found her words. "It's hard to answer when I don't know what to say. There are so many things I want to share and I don't know where to start. So many things to show you but you're not there. I know why you aren't. I know you need Jason and he needs you. But I need you and I don't rank as high. I understand and it's only right but some nights I do go out so I don't have to think about how you're not there, so I don't have to count the days you'd rather spend anywhere but with me."

Saying Serena's wine tasted of ash in her mouth would be a lie. It was a good vintage, well-aged, and just what the doctor ordered. It did nothing to soothe her pain. There was little on earth with that power.

"I'm the last person to begrudge you happiness. I hope you enjoyed every minute. I hope you danced with someone gorgeous every night. You should dance with whoever you want. Go home with whoever you want. It's only fair after everything."

"You'd give me up that easily?"

"Who said anything about easy?" Serena swirled her fine and breathed in its heady bouquet. At least she'd have Shiraz, her faithful companion. "I'm going to ruin this, I already have. I felt you slipping away in September when you didn't have time for me in Cape Town and you're just farther and farther away every day. And the painful part? Sometimes I don't miss you. I don't want that. I want to always miss you when you're away."

"I always miss you. You must know that."

"You go days without thinking about me." Bernie's protracted silences read as indifference to someone with nothing else to go on.

"No, Serena, I don't. Sometimes I miss you so much it hurts too much to speak to you."

"Those are the days I need to hear from you the most. Just a text or a one-line email. I can read so much in your silence, Bernie, and all of it says you no longer love me and you're the last one to realize it."

"You're wrong."

"On many levels and about many subjects, no doubt, but not about this."

"Maybe we should have called it quits in June."

"Maybe."

"I'm glad we didn't."

Serena agreed. "I'm glad I got to keep you just a little longer."

"I thought you couldn't imagine your life without me."

"I still can't. But I've survived plenty of insurmountable losses, haven't I?"

"Would you miss me that much?"

"Don't ask me that."

"I'm asking."

Serena turned away to pour out her wine. It may not have tasted of ash but it was still cold comfort to her tonight. "You're welcome to store your things here for as long you need."

"Even if it takes years?" Leave it to Bernie to drag her feet. She wouldn't be Bernie were she any less mulish in the face of unwanted change.

"However long it takes." She wasn't in a hurry to see the back of Bernie Wolfe. Call her sentimental.

"Okay," Bernie said, acquiescing. That was it, Serena supposed. The end was here and it was startlingly anticlimactic. Not how she expected to conclude the great love affair of her life. "So what now?" Bernie couldn't exactly fly directly back to Nairobi after abandoning her post to patch her failing relationship.

"Dinner? I have steaks. Or I could make shepherd's pie for us." She could order something. Drinks wouldn't be a problem, either.

"You're inviting me to stay for dinner?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Bernie shrugged and scraped a nail over a coffee stain marring the counter. "Seems so normal." After what they'd gone through; all that to be together and it was the little things that had driven them apart. Time, space, distance. Other people.

"Breakups are normal. Why shouldn't we go on like it's another day?" Serena needed normality or she would fall apart. Routine was the bones of her.

"Because it isn't, and I don't want to break-up with you." Her voice shook. Serena counted to ten and exhaled, grasping for a calm she didn't feel. She was going to be mature and adult about this situation if it killed her.

"I know." Serena wished she could say the same, yet it was almost a relief, like an infected boil lanced and emptied, all the infectious fluid drained. This way, she could love Bernie without disappointed expectations. No more visits to Cape Town to up spending alone. "I wish things were different." She mentally spun out a thousand scenarios that ended with them in each other's arms and none of them happened here. She supposed she'd had time to get used to the idea. Not to be happy about it, never that, but to live with it were there no other choices.

"Seems like we're always saying that. Nothing goes the way we want. But life is what we make of that, isn't it? It's what we do with our lot in life that makes up our life."

"Is this your fancy way of quoting Dumbledore?"

Bernie guffawed, embarrassed. "You caught me. Jason made me watch all the movies the last time I was home." Apparently, Harry Potter Weekend had had a calming influence on the new father. Serena had begged off in favor knitting booties for Guinevere.

"You'll always be family, his and mine. I meant what I said, I still want you in my life, if you still want to be here."

"Wild horses couldn't keep me away." She shoved a hand in her pocket. "Which is convenient considering I may have technically quit my job a couple of days ago."

"Sorry?" She stepped around the counter to catch Bernie's eye. Bernie rubbed the back of her neck. "Quit your job? Bernie, you don't think you might have led with that?"

Bernie pulled a funny face, not unlike Cameron when caught taking an extra nip of the wine on the vineyard at Christmas. "This seemed more important. It was—_is_ more important to me." As declarations went, Serena couldn't misread that one.

Serena grabbed her phone and shoved it into Bernie's hand. "Call them and un-quit."

Bernie gently pushed the mobile back to her. "It doesn't quite work that way."

"It wasn't an emergency, Bernie. You can't walk off the job for less than that." She should have asked sooner. She hadn't thought!

"It was an emergency to me. When you need me, I don't stop for red lights or ironclad employment contracts."

"Don't tell me that, not after this." Serena's stomach rebelled. She pinched the flesh between index finger and thumb to dial back her climbing nausea. She hadn't wanted Bernie to give things up for her. That was what letting her go was all about.

"I have to tell you while you'll let me. I love you, Serena. I love our life together, messy, grownup, and complicated as it is. I love us more than any 'dream job.'" She placed a tentative hand on Serena's wrist. "Do you love us?"

Serena's brow furrowed, and then cleared. "Yes."

"Do you love me?"

"Very much." If it had been worth saying once, it was worth repeating.

"Do you want me?"

"Every day of my life." The arc of a lifetime was long and Serena had no desire to face it in absence of Berenice Wolfe.

"Do you mind living with an unemployed trauma surgeon with commitment issues?"

Serena blinked to clear the moisture gathering in her eyes. She played with Bernie's lapels, laying them flat against her chest. "That depends. Does she answer her phone?"

Bernie smiled, small and fleeting. Hopeful like Serena's. "She can be taught."

"Does she love me?" Serena had to know. She had to hear it. Bernie tipped up Serena's chin and kissed her just so.

"More than her own life."

"Good, that—that answers that." Her heart skipped its common beat. Damn Bernie for making it flutter. Serena licked her lips and tasted whiskey. "Can she forgive me for being fool enough to let her go twice?"

"She can be convinced." Bernie swung her full into her arms. "But, no more starry-eyed junior doctors, or I'll be the one who walks and I won't come back." The darkness pooling in her eyes made Serena's heart skip another beat, though not from desire this time. Serena wasn't the only one capable of holding a permanent grudge.

"Understood."

"Well then, you'd better kiss me before I come to my senses."

"Darling, I plan to kiss you senseless." She held back from doing so right away, to Bernie's palpable dismay. "I'm sorry I made you give up your dream job."

"You didn't. Serena, I made choices too. My choices. That just means for the next little while it'll be up to you to keep me in the lifestyle to which I've grown accustomed."

"Is that your way of saying you want to be my kept woman?"

"You're damn right you're keeping me, and I suggest you get started." Serena was going to be buying plenty of whiskey and Juul pods in the near future. She couldn't wait. "I'm sorry I let you think I didn't love you anymore."

Serena stroked her silken hair. There was nothing like it, as soft or as chaotic, as Bernie as that hair. "Hush now, those are my demons, not yours."

"Your mess is mine, and I love you, I love you, I love you." Bernie kissed her once for each pronouncement.

Serena beamed. She couldn't fight it. "For eternity?"

"Longer than that."

Serena pushed down the torrent of feelings she'd been holding back for the past several months. There'd be time for that. What mattered was today, and the myriad days ahead of them.

"I'm sorry I kissed another woman. I won't do it again, that was the truth. I only want you."

"It'll take time, but I'm confident we can draw a line under that. Besides, there are much more important things for us to get up to."

Serena followed Bernie's lead and elected not to dwell. "Such as?"

"Showing your kept woman to the bedroom. I think I've forgotten the way." Bernie shed her coat and scarf, unbuttoned her top three shirt buttons. Serena had missed the hollow of her throat, the delectable angles of collarbones. She had missed every bit of her. She took Bernie's hand to guide her toward the stairs.

"I suggest you keep hold of me, then. I know exactly where we're going."


End file.
